


electric exhale (teaser)

by chailattemusings



Category: Borderlands
Genre: Derealization, Gen, Surrealism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-21
Updated: 2015-07-21
Packaged: 2018-04-10 09:54:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4387313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chailattemusings/pseuds/chailattemusings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rhys is lost, and found again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	electric exhale (teaser)

Rhys remembers the world falling out from underneath him, and then, blackness.

It's not accurate to describe it that way. Blackness is void. Some people would describe space like that, but space isn't void. There are stars, and planets, and now, endless ships that wander the non-atmosphere. Just because things are _far_ doesn't mean they don't exist.

Void is nothingness, stretching for distances that can't be measured, and it's almost but not quite what Rhys is feeling.

His body is _there_ , but he can't quite grasp it. He can't tell what's in the void, how far away it is, if he even understands it. Rhys can blink but there's no change around him. Maybe the light shifts. It's hard to tell.

Something sparks. Rhys' throat tightens and he tries to turn around. He _does_ turn. Doesn't he? The light shifts again. The spark gets warmer. It burns just under his throat, trailing down, eating at his skin like a flame over paper, little pieces of himself eroding away like ashes and falling around his feet. Below his feet. Somewhere.

It crawls over his arm and he flinches. Not the right, in both senses. He flexes his fingers, flesh pulled taut, skin stretched over bones over nothing. It jumps off his fingers, into the void, sparks back and hits him square in the chest.

There's something there that shouldn't be. He paws at it, metal hand, scratching and scraping, tearing more skin away. Nothing left underneath, no substance. Until there is, and Rhys' breath hitches when he finds it, fire and sparks coiled in his chest, his belly, rolling over his skin like waves and covering him. A cocoon.

His back aches. Rhys tries to turn again, blinks, the light is brighter. There's no source, it comes from all around him, flooding his senses, fire burning his nose. His clothes are gone, his skin is gone, there's burning plastic in his belly and his hand is there, still scratching.

Knives run down his back, splitting him with raw edges, two sharp lines. The spark leaks into the cracks, up and out and bursting and they're _there_ , he can feel them and then the cocoon is in front of him, falling down and over and he can see them, feel them, feel them.

Wings. Not wings. They have feathers of neurons and electricity and Rhys can _feel_ them, his own body is burning ashes and the wings are in front of him, real and bright in the void and he reaches out.

Flesh hand, wrong. Metal hand. Rhys grabs the feathers and the electricity licks over the fingers, dancing, jumping between plates and wires, tiny moths on a playground of burning. Rhys turns his hand, grabs again, stroking down the electric lines and lightning bolts, down the branches, mapping out great fiery trees.

He blinks and the light burns. It echoes off the wings and coils under his skin and he's there again but not and then there's information and he hisses at it. A flood, washing over and under and around him, barred by wings, washing like water, hitting his skin, his _skin_ and it's a beacon in the void, the vacuum.

Not fire. Not void. Electric and data and wings that burn away the darkness and his body feels right, feels whole, for the first time. Rhys looks at himself but all he sees are the wings and metal, his metal, his choice, and he blinks again and the data is in columns and piles and categories and something shifts in his vision, waking up.

His tattoos still burn but it sits heavy in his throat and tastes like bad alcohol but sweeter, pungent, like the first meal he doesn't remember. He stretches and finds his feet, finds the floor that doesn't exist and stands on it, lets his wings spread out so the light covers the long stretch of information and he breathes it in like an engine breathing in smoke and it burns again, _satisfying_ , and his wings aren't real and his hand isn't real but they're his, they _burn_ , and Rhys has felt nothing for so long he'd forgotten what the burning was like.

This isn't void. This is existence.

  
  


 


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